October 2014
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MOTHER INDIA MONTHLY REVIEW OF CULTURE OCTOBER 2014 PRICE: Rs. 30.00 SUBSCRIPTIONS INLAND Annual: Rs. 200.00 For 10 years: Rs. 1,800.00 Price per Single Copy: Rs. 30.00 OVERSEAS Sea Mail: Annual: $35 or Rs. 1,400.00 For 10 years: $350 or Rs. 14,000.00 Air Mail: Annual: $70 or Rs. 2,800.00 For 10 years: $700 or Rs. 28,000.00 All payments to be made in favour of Mother India, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. For outstation cheques kindly add Rs. 15 for annual membership and Rs. 50 for 10-year subscription. Subscribers are requested to mention their subscription number in case of any enquiry. The correspondents should give their full address in BLOCK letters, with pin code. Lord, Thou hast willed, and I execute, A new light breaks upon the earth, A new world is born. The things that were promised are fulfilled. All Rights Reserved. No matter appearing in this journal or part thereof may be reproduced or translated without written permission from the publishers except for short extracts as quotations. The views expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of the journal. All correspondence to be addressed to: MOTHER INDIA, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry - 605 002, India Phone: (0413) 2233642 e-mail: [email protected] Publishers: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust Founding Editor: K. D. SETHNA (AMAL KIRAN) Editors: RAVI, HEMANT KAPOOR, RANGANATH RAGHAVAN Published by: MANOJ DAS GUPTA SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM TRUST PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT, PONDICHERRY 605 002 Printed by: SWADHIN CHATTERJEE at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry 605 002 PRINTED IN INDIA Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers under No. R.N. 8667/63 MOTHER INDIA MONTHLY REVIEW OF CULTURE Vol. LXVII No. 10 “Great is Truth and it shall prevail” CONTENTS Sri Aurobindo TORN ARE THE WALLS (Poem) ... 759 SRI AUROBINDO’S LETTERS ON THE MOTHER ... 760 The Mother ‘MAY ONLY THE INSTRUMENT REMAIN’ ... 771 K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) K. D. SETHNA AND P. BRUNTON — CORRESPONDENCE & ADDITIONAL MATERIAL ... 772 Manoj Das SRI AUROBINDO: LIFE AND TIMES OF THE MAHAYOGI CHAPTER XXXVI: THUS SPAKE SILENCE ... 776 Gautam Malaker ABRAHAM LINCOLN — NOBLE AND RESOLUTE ... 783 Sachidananda Mohanty REVOLUTIONARY BEYOND THE BORDERS — THE MANY LIVES OF TARAKNATH DAS ... 797 Alok Pandey THE MOMENTOUS MEETING AND THE GREAT TRANSITION ... 809 Glenys Nivedita THE GOLCONDE GLOW ... 821 Ratri Ray RHETORIC IN SRI AUROBINDO’S PROSE — XII ... 833 Prema Nandakumar AMID THE LEAVES THE INMATE VOICES CALLED 11. ONE HUNDRED SOMNAMBULISTIC YEARS ... 836 759 TORN ARE THE WALLS* Torn are the walls and the borders carved by a miserly Nature, I now have burst into limitless kingdoms of sweetness and wonder. Breaking the fences of Matter’s gods and their form and their feature, Fall’n are the barriers schemed and the vetoes are shattered asunder. SRI AUROBINDO (Collected Poems, CWSA, Vol. 2, p. 675) * No title in the manuscript. Circa 1936. 759 760 MOTHER INDIA, OCTOBER 2014 SRI AUROBINDO’S LETTERS ON THE MOTHER (Continued from the issue of September 2014) MEETING THE MOTHER Smiles and Seriousness Sometimes the Mother looks at us smilingly, as if she were pleased; at other times she looks in quite a different way, as if seriously. Why not? The Mother cannot be serious, absorbed, drawn into herself? Or do you think it is only displeasure against the sadhaks that can make her so? 18 June 1934 * During some dark periods such as now, I am awfully afraid to go to Pranam, lest I should have the misfortune to see the Mother’s grave face, with no smile at all. All this about the Mother’s smile and her gravity is simply a trick of the vital. Very often I notice people talk of the Mother’s being grave, stern, displeased, angry at Pranam when there has been nothing of the kind — they have attributed to her something created by their own vital imagination. Apart from that, the Mother’s smiling or not smiling has nothing to do with the sadhak’s merits or demerits, fitness or unfitness — it is not deliberately done as a reward or a punishment. The Mother smiles on all without regard to these things. When she does not smile, it is because she is either in trance, or absorbed, or concentrated on something within the sadhak that needs her attention — something that has to be done for him or brought down or looked at. It does not mean that there is anything bad or wrong in him. I have told this a hundred times to any number of sadhaks — but in many the vital does not want to accept that because it would lose its main source of grievance, revolt, abhiman, desire to go away or give up the Yoga, things which are very precious to it. The very fact that it has these results and leads to nothing but these darknesses ought to be enough to show you that this imagination about Mother’s not smiling as a sign of absence of her grace or love is a device and suggestion of the Adversary. You have to drive away these things and give some chance for the psychic with its 760 SRI AUROBINDO’S LETTERS ON THE MOTHER 761 deeper and truer love and surrender to come forward and take up the Adhar as its kingdom. 28 July 1934 * So many sadhaks are not able to understand the Mother’s seriousness at Pranam. They find it difficult not to feel that they have displeased her in some way or other. Could you not clarify the cause of the seriousness? The whole foundation of the difficulty is erroneous. It is the wrong idea that if Mother is serious it must be because of some personal displeasure against “me” — each sadhak who complains of being the “me”. I have repeated a hundred times to complaints that it is not so, but nobody will give up this idea — it is too precious to the ego. The Mother’s seriousness is due to some absorption in some work she is doing or, very often, to some strong attack of hostile forces in the atmosphere. 19 April 1935 * About Mother’s seriousness at Pranam, you wrote: “The Mother’s seriousness is due to some absorption in some work she is doing or, very often, to some strong attack of hostile forces in the atmosphere.” But I never felt any hostile attack before going to Pranam; rather the attack comes afterwards when my vital fails to endure her seriousness. It does not matter whether you feel any attack or not — the attack is there. In fact for the last several months the atmosphere is full of the most violent attacks threatening the very existence of the Yoga and the Asram and the sadhaks personally or the body of the Mother. If you are not touched that is a matter for which you ought to be grateful to the Mother instead of your vital getting upset because she is doing her work. 20 April 1935 Wrong Ideas about the Mother’s Showing Displeasure Why did the Mother have such a look of seriousness when I went to her? I have given up everything to take shelter in her, but sometimes I feel that she is displeased with me; then I wonder for whom I am living. 762 MOTHER INDIA, OCTOBER 2014 So long as you do not get rid of this silly illusion about the Mother’s “seriousness”, this kind of thing can always recur. I have told everyone the truth about it, that it is their own minds which wrongly think the Mother is serious and displeased with them. It is under the pressure of a Force of Falsehood that wants them to get upset and to destroy their peace and set them against the Mother that these things come. Yet you all go on still listening to the Force of Falsehood. It is only when you reject the falsehood that you will be free from these troubles. * I have the idea that the Mother is completely displeased with me. Have I done something wrong or written something that has displeased her? The idea is absolutely without foundation. It is the constant illusion that the sadhaks are getting that the Mother is displeased with them, that they have done something wrong or said or written something wrong and therefore she is severe or distant, that her expression or her action shows it etc. Very often they think this even when she smiles on them most kindly. It is a purely subjective feeling generated by some difficulty in themselves. The Mother is not displeased with people because they have difficulties; it is only a reason for giving more of her help and support. All these ideas you speak of are suggestions generated by the adverse pressure on you. You can rely always on the Mother’s Grace and you may be perfectly sure that we shall not throw you off — our support will be always with you. 4 July 1933 * Today at Pranam the Mother was not as usual with me. I got the idea of her displeasure and it disturbed me for a time. There was certainly no such idea in Mother’s mind. People have that idea because it is an old and rooted one in their minds and it is true that at one time it had some meaning when Mother was dealing with the vital difficulties of the sadhaks. But now it is different. At the present stage of descent into the physical the Mother is meeting all with a large equanimity, tolerating all the mistakes of the sadhaks and only bringing an inner pressure, supporting all with her force as much as they will allow her.